


keep quiet, be silent, be words from your mouth

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Biting, Comfort Sex, F/M, Mild D/S elements, Scars, Sensation Play, all my smut turns into character studies oops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 19:06:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: (please remedy my confusion / and thrust me back into day): The first time Keyleth sees thatlookdirected at her, they're standing together under the Sun Tree and Vax is sayingI'm yours, you know, if you'll have me, I'm yours, and she doesn't know what he's offering but she knows it's so much more than her thin hands and fragile heart can hold.Or; sex, feelings, brainbad kids who need A Break. spoilers for episode 88 on





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from iamamiwhoami, '[drops](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw0JmSRMXkY)' , summary quote from Opeth, '[The Drapery Falls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=let2d76FxYI)'
> 
> For the kinkmeme prompt, ['Canon biting is going on between those two. Would love some fic to expand on that.'](http://criticalkink.dreamwidth.org/700.html?thread=218812#cmt218812)

Vax gets this — he gets this _look_ , sometimes.

Keyleth sees it for the first time when they've only been traveling together a few weeks. He's sitting cross-legged on the ground with his daggers trying to fashion an arrow out of some of the wood they've gathered, while Vex balances on tiptoes on a log next to him and cheerfully mocks her brother's skill. He drops the knife when she starts laughing, and Keyleth thinks for a moment that he's going to drag Vex down to his level, that they'll play-wrestle like the children back in Zephra. But instead something about his face shifts, so small she wouldn't've seen it had she turned around a half-second before or later.

It's a look not meant for her, and it still takes her breath away, such a hopeless devoted thing like young plants that have given themselves over to earth and sun before they even understand what it means to grow. It's a look that's gone before she can blink, vanished under the blur of Vex's hair as she laughs and tackles her  brother to the ground, mischievous fingers tickling under Vax's armpits until he too dissolves into giggles.

Keyleth bites her lip and turns away, feeling her entire body flush with a heat that's burning as bright as the early-autumn leaves she's tucked into her headpiece.

The first time she sees that _look_  directed at her, they're standing together under the Sun Tree and Vax is saying _I'm yours, you know, if you'll have me, I'm yours,_  and she doesn't know what he's offering but she knows it's so much more than her thin hands and fragile heart can hold.

 _I don't know_ , she says, because there is a weight behind the promise, a gift heavier than she is sure either of them know how to give or receive.

 _Whatever you want,_  he says, and there's a fever burning beneath his soft eyes that she wants to kindle, and when she presses the back of her hand to his forehead she imagines what it would be like to sink her nails in instead, to fall into the welcoming expanse of his skin and see from the other side what he looks like when he goes all soft and pliant for her.

It would be the other way around, Keyleth knows even now: Vax is hers to do with as she pleases, as he is Vex's, as he is Pike's, as he is all of Vox Machina's: he loves too much, too wholly and immediately, to be anything else. The responsibility settles around her, one more mantle she is too small to wear. When fear coils around her chest, her love's hunger devours it first.

The arrival of the dragons breaks the sky in half, and Keyleth thinks it must break something in her apart as well because she looks at her family, looks at Vex, at _Vax_ , and suddenly the thought of loving rather than wanting seems much easier when the object of her fear is a dragon to be fought rather than a thousand years to be endured.

She is familiar with Vax's body, his scars; there are too many roads behind them, too many frantic post-battle healing sessions — she has traced the remembered ones a hundred thousand times over in the night as she turned over the shape of her wanting. Still nothing has prepared her for this, for Vax standing before her with his head bowed, blue-black hair tangled in his fingers as he pulls it away from the Clasp's tattoo marking his back.

Nothing has prepared her for the _anger_  that rises in her at the renewed proof of someone else's imprint on his skin, and she sets her hand alight and presses every whorl and line of her palmprint against him. Nothing has prepared her for the way her cunt _throbs_  with an eagerness that leaves her breathless.

(So this is how it works, she thinks, as his flesh burns beneath her touch. So this is how she gives herself to him in return, through these marks.)

There are tears of gratitude in his eyes when he gazes up at her with that strange soft _look_ , and Keyleth gives him a watery smile in return, trying to bring her breathing back under control.

(So this is how she gives the answer she couldn't months ago, in their language she has just learned how to share.)

 

**

 

The months blur past, a frantic haze of a present in the midst of an end to the world that seems it itself will never end. Even Raishan's death doesn't seem like ending enough, and it isn't until Keyleth holds Vax's resurrected body in her arms at the end of her Aramente that she understands why.

They spend the night on the floor of one of the huts with Vex and Pike and Trinket and more blankets than any of them can count, and as the morning sun begins to send kaleidoscopes of coloured lights through the window Keyleth nudges Vax awake and they slip away to one of the other empty huts where she can press him against the door and finally kiss him, deep and slow and reminding herself that he's still alive, still _hers._

He's smiling up at her when she pulls away, his long fingers tracing circles across her hips. "I heard you, you know. It's just that..."

"Vax." She grips his wrists tightly, stilling his wandering hands. "What if we decided we're not going to think about that right now, okay? We're just going to be right here, right now."

It's not really a suggestion, in that tone of voice, and he whimpers in response, tilting his head up just a little more the better to bare his throat to her. Keyleth laughs.

It's a simple matter to free him from his soft sleep shirt on the way to the bed, and when he's finally spread out before her, she licks her lips, eyes caught on his lovely cock already hardening in his pants. Her gaze trails up his body, across the flat planes of his chest ... and stops. There's a new mark on his chest, black-purple and curling over his heart, right where the Raven Queen had held him suspended on a thread of fate. "She marked you."

He nods, and then says, "Don't tell Vex," all in a rush with his eyes just wide enough to make Keyleth laugh slightly as she joins him on the bed, straddling his hips and covering the mark with her hand.

"I don't. Like. It. When other people mark you," she says roughly, punctuating her words by digging her nails into his chest as he squirms under her. 

"Do something about it?" he suggests, pressing his hips up against her, and she can't help but groan as she rocks down into him, feeling herself beginning to grow wet.

"Mm. But what?" Her eyes flutter shut as she slips one hand down her pants to press against her clit.

"Can you do the thing with your hands?" he asks softly.

Keyleth opens her eyes at the change in tone and settles down on her heels, looking him up and down appraisingly. Her fire is only one of the things they play with like this, only one of her ways to claim him, but it was her first and it is his favourite. "Are you sure? It's only been..."

"Please, Kiki," he breathes, and she can see him struggling to remain still. He's good, though, so beautiful and _good_ , and he'll stay til she tells him he can move. "I can't think about ... can't think about the ocean tonight."

There's a sadness that clings to him, one that she can't rid him of with her kisses or magic any more than he could rid her of the anxiety that chokes her throat with his. But they can have this space, here together in each other's bodies, each other's hearts.

Keyleth strips him of his pants first, presses a fleeting kiss to the very tip of his cock before she lights her hands, braces them against his chest right alongside the Raven Queen's mark, and bends down to kiss him again, much less gently.

Vax whines as she catches his lower lip between her teeth and bites down not quite hard enough to break the skin. "Kiki, please — wanna feel you."

"I know." She kneels up, lifts her hands from his chest. "You've gotta help me out with this, though, or else —"

He laughs, and with a little maneuvering she's positioned exactly where they both want her, Vax's cock brushing against her slick folds. "You okay?" he asks, tracing looping circles around her clit.

" _Very_  okay," she says happily, as he begins to guide himself inside her. "Oh, gods, _Vax._ "

They move together with practised ease once she's settled, Keyleth spinning tendrils of fire across Vax's chest as he thrusts into her over and over, his hands steady on her waist. He makes the most beautiful noises as she clenches tight around him, and Keyleth thinks neither of them are going to last very long.

"Close," she gasps, "so, so close," and when he comes inside her Keyleth comes from the look on his face, so beautifully wrecked, so utterly consumed by his love. She falls forward, buries her face in his chest as she trembles through her orgasm, and her mouth finds the outline of the Raven Queen's mark. This time, when she bites down, she tastes blood.

"Mine," she murmurs sleepily, lifting her head to see the bruise ringed with the perfect imprint of her teeth.

"Yours," he agrees, rolling them over into a more comfortable position. "Yours, Kiki, always."


End file.
